RTH10260 wrote: ↑Wed Nov 23, 2022 1:25 pm
Gregg wrote: ↑Wed Nov 23, 2022 1:10 pm
Paper Ballots are less accurate than machine counts. Paper Ballots would take months to count. For some reason they seem to think that if we just went to paper ballots there would be no mistakes and everyone would know who won by the end of the 11 o:clock news.
It can be done. Just that the ballot forms need to be restructured. Not one huge paper strip with every possible varying variant on the same paper.
I think I posted the Swiss expierience several times around here: one paper slip per issue to vote on (enter yes or no) of the name of a person to be elected for an office. Then counting just becomes the task of separating ballot slips, separate on yes/no or names, and count those unified stacks. If you can trust those banknote counting machines, it helps to speed up the process. Electing legislatives with mulitple participating party candidacies becomes slightly more complicated, but it's only once every four years (and then there is always one black sheep among the reporting cantons that gets two days late).
RTH is correct: months is an absurd exaggeration if the counts are organized sensibly.
Based on my experience when watching coverage of the 1997 election that made Tony Blair prime minister, the UK closes its parliamentary polling stations at 9 pm or 10 pm and results start coming in about 2 or 3 am, and most results are in by 9 am the following day. Recounts can delay that (the counters need sleep!), and some larger constituencies (e.g. the islands off the coast of Scotland) only start counting the following day, because the boxes have to be transported to the counting center.
Of course that speed isn't possibly in the USA: the UK (absent those island archipelagos) is a teeny-tiny country with itsy-bitsy constituencies, rarely more than a hour's travel wide. So in most of the non-metropolitan USA you'd need an extra day for transporting ballots to counting centers.
Then, as RTH suggests, the trick is to have the ballots papers designed for hand counting, and to prioritize the counts for the most important elements. So senior appointments early, dog catchers later, shall-we-shan't-we populist proposals last. Separate colored papers makes the first stage of sorting easy; separate ballot boxes even more so.
Ireland has paper ballots (some one will correct me if I'm wrong) with a Single Transferable Vote system for multi-member constituencies, meaning voters rank candidates in order of preference: 1, 2, 3,… So counting under STV is tricky, as piles get adjusted as candidates are eliminated, and preferences applied, but Ireland manages to get its counting completed for many constituencies on the day after polling day, and within a few days for the difficult cases.
Northern Ireland is part of the UK but, like the republic, has a STV system (Great Britain - the remainder of the UK - uses first-past-the-post). In their 2017 election, according to the
Belfast Telegraph, Northern Ireland allocated all 90 seats in its assembly within 19 hours of the polls closing. It took longer during Covid.
Norway uses ballot papers and has a complicated party list regional proportional representation (PR) party list system, with national "leveling up" seats. The most recent parliamentary election in September 2021 was counted fast enough that the next day the prime minister (Erna Solberg of the Conservative party, Høyre [="Right" as in not-left]) had conceded the election to the more left-wing parties. If I recall, the final details of the results were delayed a few days because the precise number of votes in some northern (arctic) areas had a ripple effect on the "leveling up" seats, which are allocated nationally. That sort of effect would not apply in the USA, where each elections is independent from others.
Some countries have to count fast because their new government takes office immediately, or almost so. I think most countries do that. The USA is unusual in electing significantly before the winner can take office, so the odd day is probably not important.
To be clear: I have nothing against voting machines, but to imply that hand counts are impossible is just exceptionalism.